Blastomussa loyaewas first described from the Red Sea in 1978 as a separate species fromBlastomussa merletidue to the separated walls and ‘irregular voids’ in the corallites of colonies.Blastomussa loyaewas first discovered growing in abundance alongsideB. merletibut although the species was first accepted as distinct, Stephen Cairns and Charles Veron subsequently classifiedB. loyaeas a Red Sea variant. New analysis of Red SeaBlastomussa loyaeskeletons by Karl Kleemann and Christian Baal of the University of Vienna is making the case forB. loyaeas a valid species again.
The authors of the new paper published in theJournal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdomstate that “the observed features inB. loyae标本和算[摘要],指定and the co-occurrence with true B. merleti on the same knoll warrant the species’ re-establishment”. These couple images from Veron’s Corals of the World show photographs of Red SeaBlastomussawith living polyps that resemble the skeletons and descriptions ofBlastomussa loyae. But what do we know about coral taxonomy, Matthew Tibbits probably has someBlastomussa loyaeskeletons sitting on his desk waiting analysis of their microstructure to tell us it’s actually related toCaulastrea.
